The Cold Heart of Hell: RDR2 and Sins of Betrayal

Finishing our journey through the intertwined Eden and Hell of RDR2.

All articles on this site feature detailed discussion of literary allusions in Red Dead Redemption 2, and as such contain unmarked major and minor spoilers for the game, and occasionally the eventual fates of some characters in Red Dead Redemption. Read at your own risk.

Our journey thus far:

• In a Dark Wood: Dante’s Inferno in RDR2
• Mapping Hell onto Eden: Symbolism in the Camps of RDR2

The Gate of Dis & Circle 6

Sin: Heresy | Represented by: Guarma | Suggested by: Dutch Van der Linde

When it comes time to leave the parts of Hell that represent sins of incontinence (again, these are the more minor sins) and travel deeper, Virgil and Dante must pass through the gate of the City of Dis. Moats are dug around the city, making it a sort of island, like Guarma. The city has a high tower with a light at the top, which the game represents with the image of Alberto Fussar firing a cannon at Hercule Fontaine and Arthur Morgan.

The city on Guarma also appears to have had walls at one time (as Dis does), although they’re now in ruins.

Fallen angels attempt to stop Dante and Virgil from passing (like Fussar and his army of guards try to stop the gang), but a heavenly messenger (like Hercule Fontaine) helps them. When this messenger arrives,

… there came, over the turbid waves,
a dreadful, crashing sound
that set both shores to trembling.

It sounded like a mighty wind,
made violent by waves of heat,
that strikes the forest and with unchecked force

shatters the branches, hurls them away, and,
magnificent in its roiling cloud of dust, drives on,
putting beast and shepherd to flight.

IX.64-72

The violence and noise of this imagery call to mind the earth-shaking battle in “Hell Hath No Fury.” In fact, the Furies are among the crew trying to stop Dante and Virgil, which is where the mission gets its otherwise nonsensical name (the idiom is “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned;” there are no women whatever in the mission or related to the mission).

The first circle inside the gate of Dis is where heresy is punished. Dutch is the one responsible for the crew ending up in Guarma, so he’s the one most associated with its sin. His heresy is not against the Church, but against the principles that he’s taught Arthur and his other followers. Guarma is where Dutch makes one of the most substantial breaks with his principles: he murders Gloria, a weak old woman. Naturally, Arthur is disgusted by this. Although he only protests weakly, it’s a moment when his faith in Dutch breaks. Later, in Lakay, he’ll angrily tell Dutch, “I seen you killing folk in cold blood, like you always told me not to” (“That’s Murfree Country”). Arthur is the character who most frequently points out the severance between Dutch’s stated beliefs and his actions; in fact, we only know about most of Dutch’s supposed principles because Arthur says what they are.

Circle 7

Sin: Violence | Subsections: i. Against Others ii. Against Self iii. Against God

Funnily enough, not represented. I suppose it would rather open a can of worms. Note, however, that Herr Strauss would be here, as usury is a sin against God, according to Dante.

Circle 8: The 10 Malebolge

Sin: Fraud | Represented by: Beaver Hollow | Suggested by: Dutch Van der Linde

Malebolge Not Represented: i. Panderers and Seducers | ii. Flatterers | iii. Simoniacs | iv. Diviners | v. Barrators | vi. Hypocrites | vii. Thieves | x. Counterfeiters

Circle 8 is where fraudulent behavior is punished. It contains 10 smaller sections in descending circles (like very wide steps, hollowed out to contain sinners). Like Beaver Hollow, this section is made of rock. There aren’t quite as many levels, but the back of the cave resembles a giant staircase (which Arthur uses to escape with John Marston in “Red Dead Redemption”) and is almost certainly a nod to the structure of the Malbolge. Although Dutch and Micah Bell commit many of the other subtypes of the sin of fraud, the section for false counselors most fits Dutch, and the section for schismatics most fits Micah.

viii. False Counselors

In this sub-circle, Dante speaks to the spirit of the Greek hero Ulysses. Ulysses reports that he told his followers,

Consider how your souls were sown:
you were not made to live like brutes or beasts,
but to pursue virtue and knowledge.

XXVI.118-120

With these words — which we can easily imagine Dutch saying — he inspired his companions to row their boats towards Mount Olympus, for which act of hubris they all were drowned. In his commentary, Robert Hollander says “Ulysses is, in modern parlance, a con artist, and a good one, too. He has surely fooled a lot of people” (493). Remind you of anyone?

That Dutch is a false counselor is apparent in the way he misleads Eagle Flies, stoking his anger and encouraging him to do stupid things for Dutch’s benefit. Eagle Flies is a double for Arthur (“He’s me,” he helpfully tells Rains Fall in “Archeology for Beginners”). The way Dutch uses and manipulates Eagle Flies illuminates how he’s treated Arthur over the years. Pretending to fight for shared principles, he misleads both men, and they both end up dead because of him. This is made clearest to the player in “My Last Boy,” when Dutch leaves Arthur to die and gets Eagle Flies killed as a result. The mission shows the oil fields on fire; the sinners in Dutch’s subsection of hell are enveloped in flame.

ix. Schismatics

Schismatics are people who sew discord between others. The sinners here are horribly mutilated, their bodies cut open, divided the way they metaphorically divided other people from each other. Dante asks:

Who, even in words not bound by meter,
and having told the tale many times over,
could tell the blood and wounds that now I saw?

XXVIII.1-3

Beaver Hollow initially features many such horribly desecrated bodies. (The number of corpses in the game rendered into their component parts, people turned into things, can feel like commentary on how Rockstar treats its employees.) As we see from camp interactions, Micah spends his time here poisoning Dutch against John and Arthur. “You seen Micah in Dutch’s ear the whole time?,” Arthur asks Sadie Adler. “Yeah. He’s been stirring up stuff about you and John,” she confirms.

One of the sinners in this section of hell tells Dante of a still-living “traitor, who sees through one eye only” (XXVIII.85). No matter what options the player chooses, Micah’s body will bear the scar and damaged eye that he gets if Arthur has high honor and goes back for the money. But we haven’t yet reached the Circle of Hell in which Micah most belongs.

Circle 9

Sin: Treachery | Represented by: Micah’s Hideout | Suggested by: Micah Bell

ii. Antenora (Against Party or Homeland)

As in “The Veteran III,” RDR2 makes an allusion to this section of hell “out of order” to foreshadow later events. The boat that Dutch, Arthur, Micah, Bill Williamson, and Javier Escuella escape on is called the Antenor, named for the same figure that Antenora is. In the legends of the Trojan War, Antenor betrayed the city of Troy when Paris refused to return Helen to Menelaus (Hollander 599). We first see this name when Arthur and Dutch are talking, which raises the question: who betrays whom?

Dutch betrays his principles and he betrays Arthur, but is there any validity to Dutch’s feeling that Arthur betrays him by not continuing to obey him without question? As is often the case, the game’s framing is ironic: Dutch thinks Arthur is the traitor when, in fact, he himself is.

i. Caïna (Against Kindred) iii. Ptolomea (Against Guests and Friends) iv. Judecca (Against Rightful Lords)

The ninth circle is located at the frozen floor of hell. (Milton’s hell is half frozen, half afire. The Defaced Grave Point of Interest, which reads “No ice in hell,” is an intentional irony.) In RDR2, this part of Hell is symbolized by Micah’s Hideout. All of the remaining subsections are represented here. This is appropriate, given that unlike the other parts of Hell, the subsections here aren’t marked, but run together (Hollander 599).

Caïna holds those who committed treachery against family members. Mordred is present: a sinner calls him “him whose breast and shadow were pierced/by a single blow from Arthur’s hand” (XXXII.61-62). As I’ve discussed, it’s Dutch who most represents King Arthur. In “American Venom,” he shoots Micah (who is the Mordred figure in RDR2).

Ptolomea is for those who betrayed their friends. Here, a figure begs Dante to clear the ice from his eyes so that he can cry awhile before his tears freeze again. If the player returns to Micah’s body, his face is streaked with ice, including marks that look as though he’s been crying. (His face was dry when he died — the ice on his face isn’t simply a developer error, but an allusion to this section of Hell.)

Judecca is named for Judas. Given that Arthur is a Christ figure, it’s appropriate that we find his enemies here. Neither Micah nor Dutch was ever a follower of Arthur’s, but it’s not difficult to see the sense in which Arthur is their rightful lord: he’s a better person. He’s braver and smarter than Micah and arguably smarter than Dutch. The person primarily associated with this section of hell, though, is Micah. Dutch, to a certain small extent, redeems himself. We don’t know why, exactly, he shoots Micah, but it certainly isn’t for John — witness the look he gives John when John thanks him — and he was at least considering working with Micah again. My suspicion is that what John says — “We always did our best for you” — recalls Arthur’s last words — “I gave you all I had” — which is perhaps enough to tip the balance in Dutch’s mind. He didn’t love Arthur deeply (he isn’t capable of it), but he cared about him a little, and he isn’t stupid enough not to know he was wrong about Micah.

At the center of Hell, three-headed Satan chews perpetually on Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. Micah does not stand for any of these mighty figures. He’s in with the sinners briefly mentioned before this dramatic vision:

I saw where the shades were wholly covered,
showing through like bits of straw in glass.

Some are lying down, still others stand erect:
some with heads, some with footsoles up,
some bent like bows, their faces to their toes.

XXXIV.11-15

These worst of sinners can’t even move or speak. It’s an appropriate punishment for Micah, always yapping but saying nothing meaningful or consequential. These sinners are thoughtlessly tossed aside, an afterthought, just as Micah’s body is left where it falls on the mountain, no one caring enough to bury him. “When I fall, I don’t want no fuss,” he snarls in “Old Friends.” He gets his wish. “When you die, there’ll be a party,” Lenny Summers tells him. As we see in the credits cutscenes, this, too, is true.

More Allusions to Dante’s Hell in RDR2

• One of the cigarette cards features someone named Henrietta Beatrice Woods. The Dark Wood is the place where Dante meets Beatrice’s spirit.
• The title of Evelyn Miller’s The American Inferno is an allusion to the epic.
• Pronghorn Ranch represents Heaven. In Limbo, Dante asks Virgil if anyone has ever gotten to leave. Virgil tells him that Christ brought many people to Heaven, including Abel (Mr. Abel), Abraham (Abe), David (David Geddes), and Rachel (John’s horse. Don’t ask me!).
• Fortune’s wheel (for which “The Wheel” is named) is mentioned in XV.95.
• Icarus (for whom “Icarus and Friends” is named) is mentioned in XVII.109.
• The bounty target “Shepherd” Virgil Edwards (from Red Dead Online) alludes to Dante’s Virgil, who shepherds Dante through Hell.

A final note: Recall that Micah’s Hideout doesn’t just represent Dante’s Hell, but the ancient Greek Hades.

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